Filner administration, immigration and more

Leave Boy Scouts alone

Sen. Ricardo Lara’s attempt to push legislation through to remove the tax exemption status of the Boy Scouts because of their policy concerning Gays is shortsighted and inflammatory (“Boy Scouts’ ban on gays jeopardizes tax breaks,” Feb. 22). This is overstepping the constitutional rights of the Boy Scouts and any organization that wishes to exercise their religious freedom and views.

I was opposed to the local lawsuits against the Boys Scouts concerning use of public lands and I’m equally opposed to any attempt to interfere in the internal decisions of the Boys Scouts in this area as well. I sincerely wish that the liberal LGBT activists would lay off religious organizations. Each person and the organizations that support them have undeniable rights to their beliefs and a constitutional mandate to be left alone.The LGBT community needs to get that message loud and clear and choose it’s battles more carefully. – Gary C. Hardin, San Diego

Suicide bombers’ treachery overlooked

In response to “Drone strikes cast shadow over U.S. model of democracy” (Opinion, Feb. 22): The “Emirati” guy Jonathan Zimmerman quoted as saying, “Anyone you (the U.S) don’t like, you just assassinate him with a drone” conveniently forgets that it is that very sentiment that has brought the use of armed drone attacks against our enemies. How many suicide bombers have taken out the live of thousands of innocent people all over the world simply because they don’t like them?

That “Emirati” guy makes it sound like the use of armed drones to kill our enemies is an easy thing. That is about as far from the truth as the operator of an armed drone is from the target. – Neil Proffitt, Oceanside

Put people before Pentagon

We are in danger of sequestration on March 1, which means that spending cuts across the board will happen. We could go into a deep recession with the loss of thousands of jobs and it will hurt many people. House Republicans and Senate Democrats have offered counterproposals in order to protect our most vital programs, but they do not include any major reductions to the hugely bloated Pentagon budget, which is more than 50 percent of our federal budget. The Pentagon has doubled their budget since 1998, meaning we can make much deeper cuts because we would still be able to fully support everything we need, including help for our veterans.

So why should we have to sacrifice some of our basic needs and our security to fund the wasteful spending of the Pentagon with programs that have been extremely costly and abject failures, such as the F-35 plane? Just think about what our country really needs, how many jobs we could create, and how these funds could increase the quality of people’s lives across America and help reduce the debt. We need to contact our members of Congress and tell them to include the necessary deeper cuts to the Pentagon budget so that we can work toward real and sensible economic recovery. – Sharlene White, Oceanside